George Edwardson

Colonel George Edwardson (died 1857) was a veteran British army officer of the East India Trading Company who fought in the First Indian War of Independence.

Biography
After several failed careers, one in law and one in politics, George Edwardson chose to study military history and the art of war, following in the footsteps of his older brother Percy. Interested only in active service, Edwardson traveled to India, where he commanded an army of native sepoys and British troops in the name of the British East India Company.

His campaigns during the Company's important annexation of Punjab in 1849 cemented Edwardson's reputation as a decisive and courageous field commander. With regards to his attitudes towards the Indian population, Edwardson suffered a passionate and radical shift in ideology in 1842, when his brother was killed in the First Anglo-Afghan War. Percy was one of the few unlucky soldiers of the 44th battalion, the British garrison that was surrounded and massacred by Afghan forces. Like much of the British public, Edwardson saw the act as barbarous, and he supported the British army's devastating retaliation.

The death of his brother affected Edwardson deeply, and he allowed it to encurage his already racist tendencies towards the regional populations. In the subsequent years, Edwardson became less predictable as an officer and often allowed his personal feelings to guide his strategy. Over time, his name became tainted by a series of controversies regarding his brutality towards sepoy soldiers and innocent civilians. Edwarson simply shrugged off the accusations as "hearsay and misinterpretation".